Mon, Aug 18 2014, 12:11 PM
As is frequently the case for Monday's during the summer, bond markets have not been very active. Trading levels have remained in a narrow range as...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 11:14 AM
Measures
of builder confidence in the new home market rose again this month. The third consecutive monthly increase in the
National Association o...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 10:59 AM
Say
what you will about Zillow (and people do), the firm does not fall
short as a driver of information. As many in the industry are preparing
t...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 7:34 AM
Drama is fueling a surprisingly strong 2014 rally in US bond markets. Most of that drama has to do with the European economy and geopolitical risks o...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 5:23 PM
After hitting the lowest levels in over 2 months on Friday, mortgage rates bounced almost all the way back to Thursday's levels. That's somewha...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 5:23 PM
The day started out inoffensively enough with MBS and Treasuries only down slightly from Friday's latest levels. Those were also incidentally the be...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 4:21 PM
The Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB) has increased threshold amounts for loans governed by various trigger
limits under Qualified Mortgag...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 12:22 PM
The trading day began mostly uneventfully, with bond markets working their way into positive territory by the domestic open. Economic data didn't sta...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 11:32 AM
Guess
what opened up on this date 100 years ago? No, it wasn't the first
Starbucks. The Panama Canal opened. Do you think the mortgage industry
...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 7:41 AM
There are plenty of frustrating times in financial markets where a trend is only as good as it's most recent trading day. This is the old: "the tren...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 5:13 PM
MBS got very close to their best levels of the year today, as did mortgage rates. Treasuries, on the other hand, crashed through their previous flo...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 4:39 PM
There were numerous headlines swirling mid-morning concerning military violence between Ukraine and Russia. Financial markets responded in a big wa...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 2:46 PM
Home prices "firmed" in several markets
in the second quarter and, according to the National Association of Home
Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 2:20 PM
Less than a half-year after the
Ability-to-Repay (ATR) and Qualified Mortgage (QM) rules took effect most
lenders report little impact on their busi...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 1:34 PM
CoreLogic
recently awarded its Academic Research Council Excellence Award to a study
conducted by professors from three universities who looked at r...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 12:14 PM
Today has brought a decent dose of volatility to bond markets. Overnight trading saw Treasury yields rise somewhat abruptly during Asian hours. The ...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 10:37 AM
There was a significant uptick in
foreclosure filings in July according to RealtyTrac's U.S. Foreclosure Market
Report. The company said however ...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 10:31 AM
Applications for the purchase of newly
constructed single-family homes rose 2 percent in July. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) based
this ...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 10:30 AM
While the share of residential real
estate transactions that are all cash continues to decline they remain well
above historic levels CoreLogic said...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 9:47 AM
Here's
a story for the guys in IT. In "the old days" hotel rooms actually had
keys, and hotels didn't have computers. But now most hotels are reli...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 7:40 AM
It's fun anthropomorphize bond markets. After all, by the time we admit that even "black box" trading still results from human programming, markets a...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 5:18 PM
It's getting a bit eerie at this point. MBS have had extra calm afternoons every day this week, and haven't lost meaningful ground on any of them. O...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 4:49 PM
Mortgage rates made yet another small move lower , and this time it was enough to lay claim to the title of "lowest in over a month." This is mor...
Thu, Aug 14 2014, 3:46 PM
Wells Fargo has apparently decided that
a carrot is better than massive layoffs when the mortgage business starts to
slide. Bloomberg is report...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 11:56 AM
Relative to the first two days of the week, today's biggest loser (in terms of bond yields) is Europe. German Bund yields rose less than Treasuries...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 10:47 AM
"The Bureau found that Amerisave lured consumers
by advertising misleading interest rates, locked them in with costly
up-front fees, failed to h...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 9:44 AM
Applications volume was lower during the
week ended August 8 across all of the measures employed by the Mortgage Bankers
Association (MBA). MBA's M...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 9:06 AM
An Atlanta-based Internet mortgage
company, its owner and an affiliate have been hit with a $19.3 million penalty
for what the Consumer Financial ...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 7:31 AM
There has been some economic data that bond markets have clearly cared about recently. GDP comes to mind as the most recent example. But it was bare...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 4:40 PM
After a fairly slow start to the week, bond markets threatened to move higher yesterday afternoon and into the overnight session. With bonds trading ...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 3:08 PM
Mortgage rates improved just slightly today, but that's a welcome result considering the way things had been shaping up. If not for the weaker-tha...
Wed, Aug 13 2014, 1:55 PM
The estimate from the Bureau of Economic
Analysis (BEA) of sharply improved economic growth in the second quarter is
good news for the housing mar...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 12:48 PM
Home price growth continued to
decelerate during the second quarter and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said
the quarter ended with yea...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 11:57 AM
Both MBS and Treasuries have gone no higher or lower than they did yesterday, though they've made relatively quick work of exploring most of those ran...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 10:47 AM
Under
the "misery loves company" category for those in the residential
lending business, it is interesting to watch the media focus shift onto
t...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 7:33 AM
As we recently discussed, summertime Mondays might as well be part of a 3-day weekend. Volume and participation on Mondays in July and August especia...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 4:58 PM
MBS were generally flat today while Treasuries were slightly skewed toward higher yields. There's really not much more to observe about today's mov...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 4:44 PM
The Federal Housing Finance Agency
(FHFA) moved another step closer on Tuesday to its strategic goal of issuing a
single mortgage-backed security...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 3:14 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged for
the most part today. Of the lenders who had measurable changes from
yesterday's latest offerings, slight...
Tue, Aug 12 2014, 2:28 PM
It's baaaack.
The condo market that is. At least according to CoreLogic which says
condo construction completions are up 90 percent to 2,100 ...
Mon, Aug 11 2014, 11:34 AM
As we've discussed in the past, bond rallies that are fueled by geopolitical risk require constant feeding if they're to survive and thrive. In oth...
Mon, Aug 11 2014, 10:40 AM
Most
professional baseball teams still have 30+ games left in their season
(out of 162), and there is plenty of jockeying in the media regarding
...
Mon, Aug 11 2014, 7:33 AM
Even during the strongest moves lower for rates, we'll still see periodic weakness within the trend. In other words, if rates are falling and general...
Mon, Aug 11 2014, 4:33 PM
Treasuries and MBS are heading out the door in very similar territory to Friday's latest levels. This is something of a relief considering they looke...
Mon, Aug 11 2014, 3:51 PM
While mortgage rates didn't enjoy as strong of a move lower as US Treasuries last week, they were nonetheless right in line with their best l...
Mon, Aug 11 2014, 1:53 PM
While HUD has yet to post an official announcement, multiple sources indicate Carol Galante has resigned as FHA Commissioner. David H.
Stevens, h...
Fri, Aug 8 2014, 12:52 PM
The fear of a bubble, according to TransUnion in a study it
released on Thursday basically boils down to fear of the unknown. There may exist a risk...
Fri, Aug 8 2014, 11:49 AM
There are plenty of big stories right now. In terms of broader markets, last night's announcement of US air strikes in Iraq was clearly the biggest...
Fri, Aug 8 2014, 10:45 AM
Mergers continue - and every one of them hopes it works out (and not like the cover of The Economist
titled "The Trouble with Mergers"). New York ...
Fri, Aug 8 2014, 7:31 AM
The simplest and easiest way to approach bond market movement is to simply follow economic data and analyze the moves in the context of that data. Wh...
